Electrical and computer equipment, such as computer servers, data storage devices, and power supplies, are often mounted on a rack or frame using mounting members such as shelves, rails and/or brackets. As is well known, these electronic components generate substantial heat that must be dissipated in order to maintain the devices in proper working order and prevent damage and possible failure. Most electronic device manufacturers require air of a specific temperature range to be drawn into the front of the device, passed over the internal components where the heat is exchanged, and exhausted out of the back of the device. Cabinets and enclosures, as well as the data centers or rooms that house the cabinets, are typically set up to accommodate this “front to back” air flow requirement.
However, properly exhausting the heated air generated within the cabinets becomes increasing more difficult as more powerful equipment is installed in cabinets, and as the cabinets become more densely packed with electronic equipment. As a result, the inlet temperature of the air drawn into the devices is more likely to exceed the recommended operating range of the device. The result is an upward trend in the failure of these electronic devices. Such equipment failures are more than an inconvenience, as some failures may result in interruptions to mission critical systems and communications, such as those used for example in emergency response management, aviation and flight control, process control, and finance.
In many cases, however, the racks or frames are not fully populated with components, resulting in vacant sections. This empty space may result in warm air from the back being drawn into the air intake at the front, which does not permit cooler air to be drawn into the electronic equipment, and may cause the equipment to overheat.
One of the most common solutions to this problem is to attach blanking panels to the rails or brackets of the enclosure to function as a barrier and to block or fill in these vacant sections. Prior art blanking panels are typically manufactured and sold with fixed heights, ranging from one Rack Unit (RU) to four or more RUs. When the configuration of equipment inside a rack or enclosure changes, however, these fixed-sized blanking panels may need to be removed and replaced with panels of a different size. In many cases, there is no immediate further use for the panel that has been removed.
There is a need in the art, then, for a blanking panel that can be adjusted to different heights to allow enclosures and racks to be reconfigured without having to remove and replace a fixed-height blanking panel. In addition to the cost savings that may be realized by minimizing the number and different sizes of blanking panels that must be installed in any one cabinet or that need to be kept on hand for future use, a height-adjustable blanking panel may also reduce the amount of labor hours expended when a cabinet or enclosure is reconfigured.